


I've Found Someone to Carry me Home

by Some_sort_of_trash



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, Bat Family, Bruce Wayne Feels, Bruce Wayne Has Issues, Bruce Wayne Is Trying His Best, Bruce Wayne Needs a Hug, Character Study, Crack Treated Seriously, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson is a good son, Dick Grayson is best boy, Family Fluff, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Nostalgia, Protective Dick Grayson, Self-Indulgent, but don't we all, i don't make the rules, so my characters must be too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-19 19:12:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19362712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Some_sort_of_trash/pseuds/Some_sort_of_trash
Summary: Bruce is one of the most meticulous, disciplined people Dick knows. It's to an almost ridiculous degree. He's met aliens and cyborgs and mutants and beings he can't even begin to understand, yet few can even begin to compare. It doesn't make Bruce perfect by any means. It just means that of the people he expects to find asleep at the computer, he's not high on the list. Yet here we are.There's a first time for everything, Dick supposes.





	I've Found Someone to Carry me Home

Bruce is one of the most meticulous, disciplined people Dick knows. It’s to an almost ridiculous degree. He's met aliens and cyborgs and mutants and beings he can't even begin to understand, yet few can even begin to compare. It doesn't make Bruce perfect by any means. It just means that of the people he expects to find asleep at the computer, he's not high on the list. Yet here we are.

There's a first time for everything, Dick supposes.

He can understand, of course, that this was almost inevitable. At night, and occasionally during the day, but Bruce is always crabby about it then so it isn’t preferred, Batman would patrol Gotham. He'd done it since he was in his late teen years, although Bruce had been more tentative when he'd started. He was no stranger to working himself to the point of passing out. Usually, Bruce was capable of stalling this until he climbed into bed where he could at least pretend it was sleeping. 

Which is why it's glaringly obvious that something isn't right. Bruce goes the distance wherever he can to preserve his weird-ass image. Sure, his kids know better, and Lord knows that Alfred does as well, but sometimes it's easier to let him have his quirks than to bring them up. 

Slumping forward on the computer desk like a highschooler might do after pulling an all-nighter? Probably not high on the list of things Bruce wanted to be caught doing. 

Unfortunately, the ulterior reason that pops into Dick's head isn't very reassuring. 

Dick stalks forward on light feet, hesitant to wake him up before he knows anything for sure. After all, this was a man to whom sleep was an irregular and fickle acquaintance. Such visits weren't disturbed without good reason.

Usually, Bruce would stir at the slightest movement in the air around him.  Dick figured he may be to thank for that trait waning. When he was young, after he'd lost his parents, Dick used to find ways and excuses to sneak into Bruce's bed, be it nightmares or otherwise. The manor during the day was crushingly lonely. During the night, the feeling only amplified until it was too much to bear. He remembered wondering if Bruce felt that way, too. Today, however, the vigilante doesn't wake at him checking his vitals. He sleeps like the dead. Fortunately, his heartbeat is steady,  a reassuring thrum under Dick's fingers. He refrains from sighing in relief for fear of waking Bruce up. 

Instead, he settles on furrowing his eyebrows. This has almost brought on more questions than it has answers.  Delicately, he ghosts his fingers over his mentor's uncowled forehead. It's cold in the cave, he notes, which may be why the heat extends out to meet him.  He decides to bookmark that concern for later, focusing on the fact that he's not immediately dying. 

Which, you know, is the best they can really ask for.

Still, Dick doesn't think he's sick. Alfred not being in the cave, scolding him for not being in bed is a dead giveaway. The lack of Damian roaming around for the after patrol case filing is telling as well. It must have been a tough night. 

This leaves Dick in an interesting dilemma. 

He could fix the electric charge in his suit further down in the cave and leave, original objective met and satiated. He could wake Bruce up and fill Alfred's role, telling him to get to an actual bed before he came down with some debilitating illness. He could take blackmail photos that he's sure would come in handy at some point. 

He settles for the stupid option. 

The fact that Bruce's only response to being pseudo-manhandled into a sitting position is just to release a disgruntled moan and turn slightly is equal parts concerning and hilarious. Still, Dick knows what he's decided to do and is going to run with it until Bruce wakes up or something equally as likely happens to stop him. Whichever comes first.

He detaches the cape in what is probably the least dramatic version of the move he can bring himself to pull. He's a little tired too, and it's not like anyone else is there to be entertained by his antics, but it's almost a force of habit now. He takes the boots off next if only so he doesn't have to later, removing and disarming the weapons stored there with experienced hands. 

Fortunately, Bruce had the foresight to at least take his utility belt off. That thing is hell and a half to snap off when you don't have the right angle to do so. 

Really, Dick doesn't understand how Bruce can wear the suit all the time. It doesn't get more comfortable the more you get used to it. He knows. He wore the damn thing for two years when they thought Bruce was dead.

He checks his mentor's slumped form over for anything that he may have missed methodically. He figures it's good enough.  He beats a hasty retreat, footsteps soft and silent against the hard cave floor as he goes to re-open the entrance into the manor. It's muscle memory at this point. The tread back down the stairs is just as ingrained into his skull. Each slight divot, the slightly slick corner of the twenty-second step. At this point, he'd probably spent weeks of his life tracing this pathway, whether it be his days as Robin, Batman, Nightwing, or just Dick Grayson.  It was oddly comforting. 

Carrying Bruce up the steps? Not so much.

"Alright B," Dick breathes, the words refusing to be awkward or imposing. They're self-assured in the strange way they always managed to be. "Let's get you to bed. Literal bed." He shrugs his shoulders slightly, rolls his neck with it. A slight grin mutates his expression. "This chair cannot be comfortable to sleep in."

He scoops Bruce up rather unceremoniously around his back and his knees, fumbling slightly to find the best grip. Bruce manages to be both taller and heavier than Dick is, so it should be, at the very least, slightly uncomfortable. However, he's sleeping like a rock, and Dick is past the point of caring. Still, he lets out a slight wheeze at the strain, hopes he's not doing anything that's going to be painful for either of them in the morning. "At the very least, a couch or something would be acceptable." 

His steps are as lithe as ever, which is a feat unto itself. Still, as he makes his way to the base of the cave's stairs, he kind of hates himself for making this decision. 

He begins to ascend them regardless. 

Dick can think of a handful of other times he's carried Bruce, but this is the first of note where the man hasn't been severely injured. Although looking at it now, there isn't any guarantee that Bruce isn't injured. Dick glances down at his father-figure in concern. While slightly bent up, which is as to be expected, Dick is an average sized dude and Bruce is a behemoth of a man, he doesn't seem to be worse for wear. Other than sleeping like a log, which is out of character at best. 

Bruce shifts tiredly, and Dick pauses in fear that he woke him up. Instead, Bruce moves his arm hanging around Dick's shoulder and sleepily nuzzles into his oldest son's neck. Dick breathes a relieved sigh. "You're killin' me smalls." He whispers to the early morning air. 

They make it up the rest of the stairs without a hitch, and Dick nudges the clock back into place with his foot and aid from his insanely good balance. The hallways are as cold and dark as the cave had been, created by diffusion and respect for the prevailing atmosphere around Bruce. He wonders, almost haphazardly, if that's part of the reason why Bruce took him in. To lessen the void that he carried and that followed him wherever he went. 

He pulls Bruce a little closer and carries himself into the heart of the manor, not even acknowledging the stairs and the hallways between where he was and Bruce's room.

He wonders if Bruce had ever done this for Tim or Damian. Somewhere, at the center of Bruce's being, maybe, there's a marshmallow of a man. Over the years, that had become harder and harder to find, becoming almost impossible after Jason's death. It had made their relationship more strained, and in the time when they arguably needed each other the most, they fought and pushed each other away despite Dick's best efforts. They hadn't been on good terms for a long time, years even, and even now they don't talk about it much. He didn't know first-hand what it was like for his fellow Robins to live here. Some part of him regrets that, but he knows it was needed. 

Still, that hasn't stopped him from getting to know the successors to his mantle. Carrying Tim to bed was practically a ritual between the two of them at this point. Hell, Dick knew that sometimes Tim faked being asleep so he could be carried to bed. He did it to Damian as well when he felt it was needed. Damian had been averse to the action at first, another light sleeper in the family that wasn't accustomed to affection. He saw it as emasculating and condescending, angry at being treated like a kid instead of an equal. He'd warmed up to it eventually when he understood what it really was. 

He'd never really gotten a chance with Jason.

The moon cast it's fickle beams through the window at the end of the upstairs hallway, placing blanketed shadows over everything it touched. Dick's stride began to sync with Bruce's slow, calm, even breathing. He'd done this for Dick back in the day, even in the moments where it would have benefited him more to just wake Dick up. A small, nostalgic smile presented itself on his face. When he'd started off as Robin, he used to make it his mission to make Batman do it, especially in front of other superheroes. It reassured them in a time where they weren't sure that Bruce had what it took to care for a child, made Batman a little more human. He'd known, of course, that it wouldn't help his case. They thought he was too young, too weak, too human, to be one of them. Showing too much vulnerability would prove their point, it wasn't that he didn't know that; he just didn't care. Dick knew, despite Bruce's lack of communication skills, how contented and light it made him feel to be able to hold him. To be reassured that he was safe.

He needed someone to take care of as much as Dick had needed someone to take care of him.

He reached out and opened the door gently, jostling Bruce slightly in the process. His bedroom was about as dark as the rest of the manor, but Dick opted not to turn the light on. Bruce wasn't allowed to be a messy person, as per Alfred, and the design changes in the room had been minimal over the years. The path to the bed was well worn by over a decade of tired Bruce and various bat children. It was well engraved into Dick's head, too, so he knew he wouldn't trip. 

He used his toes to pull the covers toward the bottom of the bed, opting to place Bruce down with about as much pomp as he was picked up with. He brings the sheets up and tucks them around Bruce as ironically as he can before pressing a kiss to his forehead. "Night, B." 

 

Bruce wakes up the next morning to sunlight hitting his face. This in and of itself strikes him as odd, but not outside the realm of possibility. After all, he had gotten less sleep than usual in the past month, busy with case after case. Any sleep he'd gotten in the past week had been dreamless and too short. It was making him less alert than usual, putting him at higher risk of unconsciousness and hazy memory. It's not impossible that he simply forgot that he climbed into bed last night. 

At least, that's what he thinks until he sees the blankets tucked around him. 

He doesn't see anything immediately wrong when he glances around the room. Nothing looks out of place or damaged, which means it was likely one of his kids. Still, the only one who'd been living in the manor recently was Damian, and even if he had snuck into Bruce's bed last night, it wasn't likely that he would tuck the blankets around Bruce when he left. Maybe Alfred did it?

Carefully, Bruce untangles himself and pushes his way to a sitting position, eventually entering his bathroom to take a shower. 

The fact that he's still wearing the bat suit isn't lost on him. 

_ I hope _ , he thinks mournfully as he takes a shower,  _ that I wouldn't have been stupid enough to wear that to bed no matter how tired I was. _

Still, the hot water feels good against his sore back and shoulders, releasing some of the tension he hadn't known was there. Despite the almost abnormally hectic atmosphere vigilantism had brought upon him the last few weeks, he knew how to fight, what muscles were used when. There was no reason for him to feel sore in abnormal places. 

Unless he did pass out at the bat computer, which is where he last remembered being.

He steps out of the shower and dries himself off before heading downstairs, intent on viewing the footage from last night. There are only a few logical options for what happened, and he wants to confirm his guess. 

As he approaches the kitchen, he realizes he really doesn't need to. 

"The precinct has been packed lately," Dick tells Alfred. Half of his breakfast has been eaten already. "It's not exactly unusual for Bludhaven to have a lot of reports, but there's been too much activity for something big to not be on the horizon."

"It's been the same in Gotham." Bruce chimes in from his place in the doorway, taking that as his cue to enter. "Mob-related activity has been astronomical in the past month."

Dick doesn't flinch when he comes in as a stranger to the Wayne household might. Instead, he takes a slow drag of coffee and studies the table, seeming to look through it. When he finishes, he turns to Bruce. "Mornin, B. You thinking what I'm thinking?"

Bruce catches Alfred's, admittedly annoyed, eye and realizes his mistake. One of the top rules in the manor is that they don't discuss their nightlives during meals. He dances around the subject easily, grabbing a mug and filling it with coffee in the process. "I'm thinking about why you carried me to my room last night. Got any answers for that one?"

Dick, to his credit, only looks surprised for a moment before he raises his hands in mock defense, a chagrined smile filtering over his lips. "Didn't really want you to freeze down in the cave. Carrying you to bed seemed like a healthier alternative."

_ At least he didn’t deny it, _ Bruce thought wryly, thanking Alfred for the food and coming to sit down next to his eldest. If his eyes soften as he looks at his son, well, no one needs to know.

"You could have just woken me up."

Dick shrugs, looking down at his plate and going in for another bite. "You seemed tired, I didn't want to wake you."

A comfortable silence falls over the room. Even though things hadn't always been easy between the two of them-

"I've missed you, Dick."

He can't imagine where he'd be without him.

"Love you too, Bruce." 

**Author's Note:**

> I start so many fics that are just works in progress for eons, but this one basically wrote itself for better or worse. The concept for this was really stupid, yet somehow I made it slightly almost angsty? I'm a sucker for some good Dick and Bruce fluff though. Sign me up for some of that.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!


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